Search form

What You Need to Know About the Dakota Access Pipeline Protest

Native Americans from tribes all over the country are protesting the construction of a crude-oil pipeline slated to snake through sacred sites and under the water supply for the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.

Native American protesters march to a sacred burial ground site that was disturbed by bulldozers building the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) on Sept. 4, 2016. (Photo by Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)

Over the past month, thousands of protesters, including Native Americans from more than 100 tribes across the country, have traveled to the North Dakota Standing Rock Sioux Reservation to block the Dakota Access Pipeline from being built.

Last week, the Standing Rock Nation filed an emergency petition to overturn the Army Corps of Engineers’ permit for the pipeline, which will be located a half-mile from the reservation through land taken from the tribe in 1958. The tribe says they were not consulted and a survey of the area found several sites of “significant cultural and historic value” in the pipeline path, including burial grounds.

But on Saturday, Dakota Access crews began bulldozing anyway, leading to a violent confrontation between protesters and security guards. Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman was at the construction site as security guards attacked protesters with pepper spray and dogs.

On Tuesday this week, the Standing Rock Sioux were in federal court to prevent the Dakota Access Pipeline bulldozers from further destroying sacred sites. A US district judge temporarily stopped work on the pipeline and will rule Friday on the tribe’s challenge.

What is it? The Dakota Access Pipeline Project (DAPL) is a $3.78 billion conduit being built from the oil-rich Bakken fields in North Dakota, near the Canadian border, through South Dakota and Iowa, to Patoka, Illinois, where it will join up with existing pipelines to transport up to 570,000 barrels a day of crude to refineries and markets in the Gulf and on the East Coast. The Army Corps of Engineers approved the project in July with a “fast-track” option, allowing it to run under the Missouri river. The “mega-pipeline” is 1,172 miles long, making it just 7 miles shorter than the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline that the Obama administration rejected last November after a seven-year battle. The parent company of Dakota Access LLC is Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners, whose board of directors includes Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas.

The Threat The pipeline is being built near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation near Cannon Ball, North Dakota. The tribe says the pipeline disturbs sacred sites, infringes on past treaty promises and tribal sovereignty, and is a significant danger to their water supply since it passes underneath the Missouri River — the main source of water for the reservation. An earlier proposal had the pipeline crossing the Missouri north of Bismarck, but authorities were concerned about the risk to the capital’s water supply in the advent of a pipeline spill.

The ProtestsThe protests began last January after North Dakota approved the pipeline project. Residents of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation immediately petitioned the US Army Corps of Engineers to deny the final permit. In April, residents of the reservation and supporters from other tribes set up camp near the construction site to keep an eye on the pipeline workers who were waiting for approval and preparing to break ground.

SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT

Never Miss a Beat.

Get our best delivered to your inbox.

Standing Rock youth launched a petition called Rezpect our Water, and in mid-July set out on a 500-mile relay run to Washington, DC to deliver a petition of 160,000 signatures. Officials at the Department of the Interior, the EPA and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation voiced concerns. Dozens of environmental groups joined together to oppose it and celebrities spoke out, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Shailene Woodley and Jason Momoa and his Justice League co-stars, including Ben Affleck. The Army Corps of Engineers approved the permit in July.

On Aug. 10, construction began and a dozen demonstrators were arrested as they tried to stop it. The call for help went out, using social media and the #NoDAPL hashtag to spread information, and within a week hundreds of protesters arrived, swelling the ranks to more than 2,500. State officials shut down the highways leading to the site and removed state-owned water tanks that had been brought in by North Dakota’s Health Department earlier in the summer to serve the encampment. With thousands of protesters still gathered, Gov. Jack Dalrymple declared a state of emergency on Aug. 19.

The Process The Dakota Access pipeline was fast-tracked from the beginning, using the Nationwide Permit 12 process that treats the pipeline as a series of small construction sites and grants exemption from the environmental review required by the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. And since it does not cross an international border, as the Keystone XL project did, it escaped a more probing federal analysis of its economic justification and environmental impact, according to the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, David Archambault II, who wrote in a New York Times op-ed that they have been opposing the pipeline since they first learned of it in 2014.

Food and Water Watch mapped out the institutions that are bankrolling Dakota Access, LLC and its parent company, Energy Transfer Partners, and learned that the Standing Rock Sioux are pitting themselves against the financial interests of at least 17 firms that have loaned the company $2.5 billion to construct the pipeline.

Gail Ablow is a producer for Moyers & Company and a Carnegie Visiting Media Fellow, Democracy.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 License.

Our pandemic coverage is free to all. As is all of our reporting.

No paywalls. No advertising. No corporate sponsors. Since the coronavirus pandemic broke out, traffic to the Common Dreams website has gone through the roof— at times overwhelming and crashing our servers. Common Dreams is a news outlet for everyone and that’s why we have never made our readers pay for the news and never will. But if you can, please support our essential reporting today. Without Your Support We Won't Exist.

Further

Prepping for Saturday's protests in D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser went for the grand gesture - and a symbolic middle finger to the racist cowering in the White House - and had "Black Lives Matter" painted in yuge yellow letters on the city's main drag. Bowser's action, aimed at recognizing the thousands in the streets "craving to be heard and to be seen," was criticized by some activists as "performative distraction," but many celebrated it as a vital tribute: "We are saying it loud. We are here."

Common Dreams brings you the news that matters.

Sign up for Newsletter

Connect With Us

Support our common dreams.

Can We Count on Your Help Today?

Common Dreams is a small nonprofit with a big mission. Every day of the week, we publish the most important breaking news & views for the progressive community. To remain an independent news source, we do not advertise, sell subscriptions or accept corporate contributions. Instead, we rely on readers like you, to provide the "people power" that fuels our work. Please help keep Common Dreams alive by making a contribution. Thank you. - Craig Brown, Co-founder

Support Our Work -- Join the small group of generous readers who donate, keeping Common Dreams free for millions of people each year. Every donation—large or small—helps us bring you the news that matters.

Support Our Work -- Join the small group of generous readers who donate, keeping Common Dreams free for millions of people each year. Every donation—large or small—helps us bring you the news that matters.